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Lesseps
Unit
type: land battleship Tasked with freeing the people of Earth from its tyrannical governments and furthering a pro-Coordinator agenda, ZAFT's Earth Liberation Army began its drop operations without any specialized military hardware for use in a terrestrial environment. After PLANT began developing a number of unique mobile suits for the task, ZAFT's planetside forces also devised a series of warships and support craft, among other vehicles, for combat in gravity conditions. The Lesseps-class land battleship is one of ZAFT's quantifiably successful designs - a highly effective combatant for mobile suit warfare that was reasonably economical for production on ZAFT's fairly limited resources. The Lesseps' overall shape is essentially an oblong box with four outboard foils, the latter of which are equipped with ZAFT's newly designed "scale system", a unique propulsion apparatus. The scale system utilizes numerous articulated plates that vibrate at an incredible speed, virtually liquifying any type of loose soil and propelling the resultant slurry opposite the direction of the battleship's movement. This allows for similar function to more common hover systems with greatly reduced power consumption and noise, and although it can be used for movement over water, the battleship's speed slows to a crawl over very hard terrain as the scales cannot achieve a meaningful purchase. Much of the Lesseps' central hull is given over to storage for a large contingent of mobile suits, deployed via the large hatch in the center of the bow region. Taking advantage of their very compact profile, two dozen BuCUE (or LaGOWE)-type mobile suits can be stored and deployed very quickly - the hangar's capacity reduces somewhat when used for normal mobile suits, although it is still capable of fielding quite a significant number. During ZAFT's war on Earth, the Lesseps proved to be quite an asset in combat conditions - ZAFT's landing points in Australia and Africa offered large amounts of terrain that the scale system could easily operate in. The battleship's superior firepower coupled with its mobile suits' superior mobility often proved a devastating combination against Atlantic Federation army groups. Demand for Lesseps-class ships was perpetually high, with ZAFT's planetside factories consistently unable to keep up with production orders. When the war turned against ZAFT and the Earth Liberation Army was dissolved, a large number of Lesseps were abandoned - the ships were too large to retrieve, and would be of questionable purpose to ZAFT outside of the terrestrial theater. Some of these battleships have wound up in the employment of well-connected mercenary and outlaw groups - the same qualities that made it a favorite among ZAFT commanders were often equally appealing to renegades, although the scale system's complicated hardware is often maintenance-intensive, so only outfits with access to good service facilities can really make good use of the ships.
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